The pianist Marcus Roberts rose to prominence as a gifted performer — first with the Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center bands for years, then with his own trio and as a classical soloist. Along the way, he's become a mentor to many younger musicians, training many on the bandstand and from his professorship at Florida State University. That's given rise to a new group called The Modern Jazz Generation, which recently released a suite of original work called Romance, Swing, and the Blues.

World Cafe

4:03 pm

Thu February 12, 2015

In World Cafe's newest Latin Roots segment, Rachel Faro returns to discuss lullabies, or canciones de cuna. Many of these songs are passed down from grandmothers to babies and end up becoming songs that everyone knows. Faro will play a couple of examples, and then you can explore her Spotify playlist if you truly need to drift off to sleep.

All Songs TV

8:38 am

Thu February 12, 2015

SOAK is the music of eighteen-year-old Bridie Monds-Watson from Derry, Ireland. I love the simplicity in her music and puzzling out the images in this song, "Sea Creatures." At one moment I think it's a love song, with lines like:

Songs We Love

2:10 pm

Wed February 11, 2015

The songs of Sadie Dupuis, the songwriter and guitarist of Speedy Ortiz, dance a tightrope of juxtapositions: Equal parts hilarious self-deprecation and wry honesty, she can fire off lyrical phrases masked in ambiguous, sing-songy non sequiturs, then reveal personal opinions and complicated feelings that cut deep.

World Cafe

1:16 pm

Wed February 11, 2015

The Portland folk-pop band Horse Feathers' new album, So It Is With Us, showcases a lively, even aggressive sound. It's a much different approach than the one taken during the group's previous visit to World Cafe. Bandleader Justin Ringle presides over a full-band sound that's more cohesive than ever, and you can hear that quality in this upbeat session.

The artists featured on this week's Jazz Night In AmericaWednesday Night Webcast are, by a fair margin, the least-known performers we've had on the program. Their names don't travel far outside the underrated musicians' community of the mid-Atlantic — specifically, Washington, D.C. — but not for lack of talent. They're among the premier musicians in the region, some being bandleaders themselves, and they all have strong individual sound identities.

Favorite Sessions

11:38 am

Wed February 11, 2015

On the day the charismatic Glaswegian pop band Belle And Sebastian released its new album Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance last month, the group performed as part of KCRW's Apogee Sessions. With 13 musicians onstage, Belle And Sebastian weaved through new tracks like this one, "The Party Line," and dug into its catalog for old favorites. It's a captivating performance in front of an intimate Santa Monica crowd.

Wed February 11, 2015

Last year you heard Terrace Martin's work on YG's album, Ninth Wonder's compilation, Big K.R.I.T.'s Cadillactica and, just this week, a new song by Kendrick Lamar, called "The Blacker The Berry." In the space of less than six months in 2014, the LA-based producer and multi-instrumentalist also put out a full solo album, 3Chor

Songs We Love

11:17 am

Wed February 11, 2015

So much of punk is about ratcheting up tension, whether through cranked-up amps and explosive drumming or the release of pent-up anger. That's one side to Joanna Gruesome's fast and fuzzy music. But the Cardiff band with the punny name also knows how to offset that noise by deploying hooks just as a song reaches its breaking point. It's a winning formula on full display in "Last Year," the new single from Joanna Gruesome's forthcoming album Peanut Butter.

6:03 am

Wed February 11, 2015

I'll be online at reddit.com/r/music on Wednesday, February 11, 1 to 2 p.m. EST, answering your questions on this post. I'm a little scared because you can actually ask me anything. It will be kind of like a Tiny Desk Concert (intimate, awkward) but I'm sure we'll have fun.

When Amit Peled was 10, his parents gave him a gift: a cassette of music by cello master Pablo Casals. Peled had no classical background; his parents were not musicians. He says his own budding interest in the cello was a scam, a way of getting close to a girl in his town who happened to play the instrument. And yet, every night, he would fall asleep with the tape playing from a boombox beside his bed. The music made an impression.

World Cafe

3:37 pm

Tue February 10, 2015

If you saw the concert film Another Day, Another Time — the companion movie to the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis — you saw today's World Cafe guest. Punch Brothers performed as the house band, accompanying a wide range of folk and roots-music acts.

Its new album, The Phosphorescent Blues, extends well beyond Punch Brothers' bluegrass roots to incorporate a huge variety of pieces, including two by the classical composers Debussy and Scriabin.

Tue February 10, 2015

We were all here before. Rising up out of the subway onto 125th Street, it strikes me that I should come uptown to Harlem more often. The Popeye's on 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue is still there, offering the same crispy bird parts and sodium-heavy buttermilk biscuits; it's still the same bustling, up-til-3-a.m. refuge it always was. Vendors still hawk street literature, pamphlets and incense sticks on fold-up tables that line the sidewalks. It could just as easily be 1995. That's when I was restless and unsettled.

World Cafe

10:16 am

Tue February 10, 2015

"I think America needs people like me," Marilyn Manson tells World Cafe host David Dye. "The world needs bad men to keep out the other bad men. And I think the world needs a villain like me, because I'm the part of the movie where change happens."

Known as a dark, demonic, heavily made-up shock rocker, Manson just released his first new album in three years, called The Pale Emperor. Written and produced with film composer Tyler Bates, it exhibits a stylistic shift, as a few blues chords sneak into Manson's industrial rock.

Front Row

9:03 am

Tue February 10, 2015

The L.A. pop-rock band Milo Greene performed live at House Of Blues in Boston on Oct. 18, 2014. The group played an assortment of songs from its synth-heavy second album, this year's Control, as well as fan favorites from Milo Greene's 2012 debut. Here's one from the new album, called "On The Fence."

SET LIST

"On The Fence"

You can watch Milo Greene's full set at House Of Blues Boston on WGBH's YouTube channel.

Lord Huron's "Fool For Love" opens with a delicate wash of humming bells, a distant organ drone and a few carefully plucked strings. It's a beautiful, meditative mix that shimmers with the kind of hope and determination that only a new day can hold in its earliest hours, just after waking, before the inevitable letdown.

Even trailblazing composers like Steve Reich sometimes look to the distant past for inspiration. His 1993 Duet for two violins and strings is music in which minimalism reaches back to its ancient roots. These six minutes of mesmerizing sunshine recall both the rigorous counterpoint of J.S.

Tiny Desk Concerts

7:03 am

Tue February 10, 2015

When I first imagined Mucca Pazza at the Tiny Desk, I honestly had no idea how the Chicago band's 23 members would fit in — in the literal sense of the term. To load-test this performance, we actually gathered a gaggle of interns behind my desk and began to stack people on cabinets, step-stools and, of course, desks.